Dragonquest IX: Hope
by spookyplums
Summary: A dramatic retelling of the main plot of DQ9. Exploring in greater detail the game's subtle themes of misanthropy, human weakness and the hope for redemption in the face of a divine wrath. The series follows the journey of one fallen celestrian fighting to protect a race he despises in the faint hope that he might reclaim all that was taken from him the night the fyggs bloomed.
1. Chapter 1- Copper Cutter

**Chapter 1- Copper Cutter**

They had told her and told her and told her a third time just for good measure to wait until they cleared the pass. Patty had thought the freak earthquake from a few days ago would have seen business for her Stornway inn skyrocket as stranded and wounded travellers flooded in for 'a bed and a bite' and took refuge from any more calamities. Patty had once fancied herself quite a shrewd woman with an eye for business and the ability to know anybody at a glance. She was not quite sure how she fancied herself in her current predicament.  
She did not have time for this. Every second she spent trapped there was another second her inn, Edwinn's inn which he had built from the ground up with his own two blessed hands, went without busness and was pushed ever closer to bankruptcy and closure. She could never have let that happen. That inn was everything to her. It was where she had made herself when she was nothing more than a lost girl without direction or dream. It had become her charge when Edwinn had left for his daughter's health and now it was her responsibility to drag Edwinn back if need be to save the Quester's Rest. But how she planned on doing so half buried in rubble in the bowels of the long abandoned (and for good reason) Hexagon she had no idea.  
She would have cursed if she could have afforded noise. She dare not even as much as whisper though, not with that _thing_ so close by. That thing that had found her and charged her and tore the ceiling down atop her when she fled. They had split the mountains in two some time ago rather than force people to take the monster infested trip through the Hexagon to travel from Stornway to Angel Falls and there had been little question why. Too many were dying for the trip for King Schott to sit idle. What had made Patty think she could beat the odds when she needed to most and make the trip alone?  
She spat at her own weakness. She could not give up now, not when Angel Falls and Edwinn were so close. She could feel the stones clasping her lower half to the floor but could not turn to free herself. If only she could have turned to use her arms.  
Something slipped and she gasped for the shock. Her palm slapped over her mouth and the crack rattled the dead chamber air. Wide eyes scanned where they could and her ears could hear footsteps. Loud footsteps. How close? She might have been able to twist round and free herself but the noise would surely bring the beast to her again. It was a choice between a slow death of endless fear and starvation and a potentially quick mauling. Hardly the most favourable gamble but it was the gamble she had to take. For her life, for her inn, for Edwinn's inn.  
She took far too long in preparing herself and the footsteps' volume tore at her resolve. They were oddly smaller though. Odd. She was sure it was simply her mind toying with her, bored with her procrastination.  
"Get it together girl. Just turn, push and run. Slice of pie." Her whispered words were bold but she was content to lay where she were and wait for something. She forced herself on, slowly at first. The stones were heavy and the dusty air had her fighting chokes in her quest for silence. She made a push, grunting. The rocks moved against one another, cracking in time with the sprinting footsteps. Something was coming. Too fast for caution. Too fast for fear. The grunt became panicked curses and the curses choked her. The hacking coughs brought her eyes to water and blinded her. All she saw was a hazy blur and in that blur, something stood over her.

"You are alive then, it would seem." A haughty voice with an accent Patty's worldly ears knew nothing of but could tell was lined elegantly with spite said. Patty blinked and rubbed sight back into her eyes. "Patty, is it?"  
Her rescuer could not have been older than a teenager but had the face and distaining sneer of someone far older and far bitterer than any teenager had a right to be. Neatly parted brown hair coated at the fringe with perspiration and an upright stance and posture, someone of secular or noble upbringing, she supposed. Yet the grime slathered over his face and hands coupled with his visible indifference to the filth told her something else. A rebellious snob or a peasant with a complex? Patty inclined towards the former by the young man's attire. It was like nothing she had seen before outside of the occasional travelling minstrel to turn up at the Quester's Rest. Over a tight black shirt was an odd jacket of red and gold strips that extended not far past the shoulders but was joined by an ivory button at the throat. It was nothing cheap, clearly and neither was his weapon by any means.  
Weaponry was not her forte by any means outside what she was told by the occasional warrior hoping to impress her but she knew the sword this young man held outclassed any she had seen before. Stained by use though it was, she felt in awe of the blade. It was something that belonged more in the tabernacle of a church than in actual combat and looking at the metal too long might have convinced her that it sung.  
So, in two seconds, she had her rescuer down. He was from a privileged upbringing, perhaps the mayor's son from Angel Falls, yet more than competent in battle and well aware of the fact. Right handed, however using his left. The lack of injury suggested it might have been his trump card in times of crisis. While assumedly inspired by the Gleeban battle minstrels, she might have urged him down a different path. Not a warrior or a mage, something as disconnected and detached as he appeared to be.  
"Yeah. That's me." She gestured with her hand, trying to feign comfort "So what brings you down to this fine hole in the dirt?" _He's standing still right now. So those footsteps I hear can only be…_  
"A favour I owe." He quickly explained as he stepped closer and began to see to the rocks that trapped her. They moved easily under his strength. _That and his eyes…he isn't normal.  
_"Peachy. I suppose I thank you, right?" She motioned to his sword. "That's not some copper cutter you got there. Make sure it don't slow you much. Don't want to be here when that thing gets back."  
Suddenly he tensed, jostling Patty. She didn't think she had offended him, she hadn't seen him as the touchy type. Then she heard it too. Not just footsteps, she realised she had stopped hearing them altogether over the beating of her own heart in her chest.  
She heard breathing.  
Then her own…  
…and then the roar of the hexagoon.

While running from it Patty had never appreciated how huge the beast was. Always she had only heard it or caught a glimpse of it but always smelt it. Behind the teeth in its monstrous jaws, each as large as her two fists placed side by side, nestled a stench as foul as the hexagoon itself. A horn from either side of its sickly green mane jutted forth in a sharpness that reminded Patty of her childhood fear of knives. Her rescuer had risen to his feet, seemingly abandoning her to save herself and focusing entirely upon the hexagoon. The two locked red eyes of Patty thought for a moment that she had vanished from existence so far as he was concerned.  
"Hey! Kid! You!" Patty scrambled for some kind of name. "Copper Cutter, darn it! That's the big guy I was running from when I got stuck here. Hurry up and get me out! Don't just stand there admiringly!"  
A cold draught rushed through the chamber and gently flicked Patty's hair and then brushed the loose tassels of Copper's jacket. He spoke to her in a voice as chilly as the breeze.  
"Angel Falls will be safer with this thing dead. You, by extension, will be as well."  
Patty gaped at the mouth. She knew confidence and could even respect it to an extent but she would never condone idiotic arrogance. Words deserted her when Copper's sword found itself strapped to his back in blissful useless standby.  
"You…you're going to get us both killed." Patty heard her own voice as far too hollow for her liking. She shook herself to life. Copper may have intended to die there for his own blithering arrogance, hand to horn with the hexagoon, but Patty could not afford that luxury just yet. With renewed strength, she attacked the rocks trapping her. She growled against pain twisting round and did all she could to ignore the implosion of her ears when the hexagoon roared and charged.

She found herself just at the right angle at the right time to watch Copper snap his arms around the hexagoon's right horn. The beast forced him back nine steps but his olive boots dug into the stone and carved paths until they stopped.  
Patty thought she had seen it end there but then Copper began to yell and twist and  
_By the Almighty is he...?  
_Copper cried out and launched the hexagoon over his shoulder and over her. The monster's shadow cast her into darkness but her eyes followed Copper the whole way.  
First he raced past her, speeding past the flying hexagoon and into and up the wall. He landed on the hexagoon's haired stomach, stumbling and nearly falling. He gripped two bunches of hair and stabilized himself before leaping up, somersaulting and planting his feet on the ceiling. His red eyes took in the flying monster in all the time gravity allowed. It was apparently more than he needed.  
Patty watched him press off and lurch forward with a quick glint all she got to tell her he had drawn the sword.  
The beast shrieked when Copper ripped through, a rotating blade and nothing more in that moment. A crack shredded the air and the horn crashed to the ground, burying itself halfway in the stone. Copper touched down after followed by the muffled thump of the hexagoon's body.

In the subsequent unsettling quiet, Patty found it in her to rattle free from the rubble- the Almighty knew Copper was not going to help her any more than he saw he needed to.  
"You're a real sweetie, aint ya? Comin' all this way for little ol' me?" Patty smiled through the pain she was shaking from her leg.  
Copper did not seem to hear her, instead staring fixated at the body of the hexagoon. "I missed." He grumbled. Then he turned to Patty with a dark look. "It is not yet slain, only unconscious. That will have to do for now, seeing as you are free. Come, I have no desire to be in this wretched place any longer than needs be." He grabbed her at the wrist and began to pull at her. Patty felt it wise not to try and pull back.  
"You sure are some real smooth talker." She commented. Copper pulled her most of the way to the main chamber of the Hexagon and she watched as the monsters all of Stornway had been instructed to fear fled from his path.  
"You were a fool to tread this path. Do you not know that soldiers from your Stornway began work to clear the mountain path only yesterday? What journey was so imperative that you risk so much to make it?"  
"That's my concern, Copper Cutter kid." Patty bit. Copper was quickly wearing on her but her innkeeping tricks slowly kicked back into blaze. A false smile and idle chit-chat ought to see her to Angel Falls without her trying to strangle her rescuer. "No offence meant. It's just my issue, y'see?"  
"Well you almost died for it. Had that happened, she would have been distraught."  
"She?"  
"I said I owed a favour."  
"What for?"  
No response.  
It would bug Patty no end, but she realised that perhaps a journey travelled in silence might be better for both of them.

When the faintest glimmers of natural light trickled brightly in thin strips around the final corner, Patty at once felt tired. Her legs which had carried her like weightless gusts quickly converted to pain shackled blocks of lead. Fresh air seeped into her lungs in a cool spot and she smiled.  
"Can you keep walking?" Copper suddenly asked her. After the mute labyrinth trek, his voice took her more by surprise than if the hexagoon itself had taken her hand.  
"Yeah. It's a push but I'm good. Why? You worried for me or something? Aint you just the sweetest."  
"Do you recall I told you that the beast was not dead?"  
Patty felt her stomach turn and the world pull out from under and around her. She tossed her head round, her neck protesting for fatigue. She could not see it; of course she would not. She would always have heard it first. So what would that mean, otherwise?  
"What? You gonna go back down there and finish the job? Well, I'm touched you went through the trouble of sparing me the sight and all but don't you think it would have been better to do it there and then?"  
For the first time, Copper actually looked as though he heard her. It was not much, only a flicker across his cheek, under his eye and a quick empty open of his mouth but Patty's eye saw embarrassment.  
"That is not how I was taught to do it." He managed, denying her anything beyond that as he stepped away and stood guard with his back to her and his sword in hand.  
"Honour and all. I getcha." Patty was honestly glad to be out of Copper's company. She had places to be and an old friend to drag home and neither of those aims afforded her the pleasure of Copper's git-hood. "Suppose I'll see you at Angel Falls, right? I just keep going west, right?"  
She was used to Copper's quiet at this point and so was entirely unsurprised when she only received a nod from the back of his head.  
She wanted to just walk off to Angel Falls and leave him there but the more she thought about it, the less sense it made. Since the earthquake, monsters swarmed the world with aggression the likes of which had never been seen in recorded history. She liked to think she could make her way alone; Angel Falls was hardly the wrong side of Dourbridge in terms of danger. Then what? She found Edwinn and his daughter and waited until the pass was cleared. The Almighty knew she didn't plan on chancing the Hexagon again. If nothing else, Patty might have enjoyed watching Copper drop kick some foolhardy slime on the way back. That aside, she needed a rest. So she wandered over to the wall by the entrance and took a seat, sighing loudly as she did so.

Copper wheeled on her, red eyes open and his face stretched in urgency. "MOVE YOU DOLTISH TAVERN WENCH!" he screamed and Patty shot to her feet, ready to uppercut him clean through the chin.

Then the ground in between them cracked and splintered and the hexagoon shot up and through. It stank the same as before but its eye as it rose up before Patty had never been so filled with rage.

"Dammit! I misjudged it. I misjudged _everything_ and now the village is at risk!" Copper growled, hammering his forehead with the handle of his sword until the pasty pale skin flushed bright red.  
Patty darted out as the tumbling stones from the hexagoon piercing the ceiling collapsed around her. She was not about to be trapped again so quickly; she could not stand the idea of Copper having to dig her out again.  
"What you say?" she rushed in close to Copper and snatched him by the jaw. He was a short one, she could see now they were that close to one another. "Why would the Falls be at risk? And any more of your fancy posh stick and I'll wallop the red from your eyes, kid!"  
Copper scowled, pulling away and looking up through the hole in the ceiling where the hexagoon had latched to the lip and was roaring a terrible cry as it pulled itself up and sent more stones crashing down.  
"Monsters are no idiots, despite what your inherent mortal arrogance would have you believe. It understands we came from a settlement and understands that the west holds the softer target." He went quiet again, but in a different way. Patty had not stopped looking at his eyes, for how they intrigued her in their difference, and she could tell that he was looking at the hexagoon anew. It was not looking so much as it was analysing, studying. She watched the subtle jerks of the chin and the rapid flicker of his blinking and then the flash to normality when he was finished.  
"You had me understand that you knew and could make the way to Angel Falls, is this correct?" he asked.  
It was Patty's turn to nod and say nothing.  
"Then I shall meet you again in friendlier circumstance, I hope." And with nothing else, he shunted Patty to the floor out of the path of a falling stone. He leapt atop it, then to another still falling and to another still until he reached to hole. By then, the hexagoon had screeched its celebration and began its charge to Angel Falls in one gigantic soaring leap with stones still flying out from its fur behind it.

Copper Cutter, that was the name he was given and one did not intend to be using long enough to complain at, realised it had been a relatively terrible method of pursuing the hexagoon without wings. While at this point he could consider himself a rare expert in the art of falling he did not suppose a fall from the height he had placed himself at was something to be coveted.  
Every second, he was falling and scraping back mere metres for every hop between stones. The hexagoon shrank from sight and swelled up again over and over until Copper felt sick in the stomach. Finally, he struck out his hand and snatched up a handful of the spiny fur on the tip of the monster's tail. It slipped. His sword hand reached out and added fingertip strength to the grip.  
His heart pounded in time with his head nd his vision limited itself to a single tunnel between himself and the enemy. The winds tearing past his forehead told him he was sweating but he had never been colder.  
He yanked the fur and brought himself upright. Staring down the hexagoon's back he could see in the near distance the cascading and almost divine spread of the waterfall from which Angel Falls took its name. It had been that waterfall into which he had fallen and from its mythological benevolent pool he had been pulled out and cared for.  
The beast would not defile that space so long as he drew breath.  
His teacher had always ordered him to curb his reckless streak and it had remained the only lesson he had found impossible to heed. He sheathed his sword; he needed both hands for this. Breathing became near impossible for the winds and changing altitude and his eyes were forced to squint. Putting out one hand after the other, he clambered along the monster's back. The beast lurched sideways and Copper leapt a moment too later to make the critical strike.  
"Damnation!" he cried out as he jumped from the neck and twisted round in the air to face the hexagoon in freefall. He was clumsy, twice now he had missed the vital spot and instead hacked away again and again through a horn. His teacher would be sneering in disgust if he could have seen him then.  
The final horn was shredded by Copper's blade into twenty eight fragments, each of which hit the ground before Copper's heel smashed down into the hexagoon's scalp and forced the dazed monster into the ground.  
Copper landed on the hexagoon's back with a dull thump and let gravity roll him down the beast's side and on the soft green grass that surrounded Angel Falls. He looked up at the sky; it was a clear day with a sun only semi-obscured by cloud. He would have preferred a storm, if he was honest, but Angel Falls was simply too peaceful for anything shy of a perfection that felt thoroughly dishonest to Copper.  
He swore he could hear his name being called out in a voice he knew. Hers? Was it she who had pulled him from the waters and waited on him until he returned to health? If so, then she was a bigger fool than he already took her for. Clearly the beast was not yet dead and approaching it could hardly be described as the wisest course of action. A glimmer of light flashed in front of him, violet and bright and momentarily blinding. When his sight returned, he was greeted with the roaring open maw of the hexagoon.  
"This is surely a jest…is it not!?" He groaned as the beast clamped its giant jaws around his waist, clamping tight in efforts to crush him. His arms burned trying to keep the mouth pried apart and his nose burned all the more from the stink. Before he fully knew what was going on, he was flying again only now without wings. He soared once more over Angel Falls and caught a glimpse of she who had helped him stepping from her home and jumping back in horror when she saw him. She was still wearing her ridiculous orange bandanna, did she ever take the thing off? Always nearby, of course, was Ivor, the son of the mayor. An utter ponce and lackwit but of course he had to be to be so smitten with her. They both looked up and gawked at him and then looked out into the lands around the falls and terror possessed them both.  
Then Copper hit the church spire and blackness overtook him.

The earthquake had knocked the bell from the spire, which Copper supposed was a good thing. He needed a thousand things before a ringing bell in his ears. How long had he been unconscious? Not long, apparently. The hexagoon, now hornless and doubly filled with humiliated anger, was still charging for the village. The ground rattled under its stampede and Copper would not be difficult to convince that the tremors could knock celestrians from heaven.  
One eye was useless for now, Copper did not have time to try and pry it open. Energy trickled back into his limbs and he groped around for his sword. He burst awake when he could not find it, the constant throb forgotten in the moment of panic. How could he have lost it? He could have sworn that he had never let it go, even during his flight. The renewed roar of the hexagoon brought his attention back to the village he had been told to protect. Every mortal was screeching and running around like spooked livestock before any respectable race. It was raw anarchy. Each saw to themselves and their own safety before even daring to think of the others and even then the thought was relegated to mere pity. He saw Ivor shunt the horseman to the floor, running against the tide of people fleeing to the back of the village. Ivor stood at the gates, sword in hand, set to face the hexagoon. He was shouting something, two things specifically. Copper could hear nothing but an endless ringing. He was shouting something to the beast, for certain, and something over his shoulder to…  
Erinn.  
_The foolish little girl!_ Copper mentally snarled seeing the girl who had pulled him from the falls still standing there staring at him. Shock? Mere idiocy? Copper was almost tempted to leave them both to their fates.  
Almost. He still had a duty to perform. Beyond that, eve, he noticed the sword Ivor was wielding.  
_Presumptuous little..!_

Copper ran down the church, rolled into the ground and sprinted towards the gate.  
_I feel…warm._  
He passed Ivor, wheeling to snatch the sword without losing momentum. People were still screaming. There was so much noise. Some of it, he thought, was his name being called out. He did not care. Even the hexagoon fell silent.  
He could see everything he needed to see.

Minutes later, when the world returned to the monotony devoid of crisis, Copper watched the hexagoon explode in the familiar tame indigo cloud that marked the death of a monster. The village, he could hear, was quiet but he could feel every set of eyes resting on him.  
Not long after, he felt a soft hand slap his shoulder and almost push him to the ground. He could finally feel how exhausted he was and he was still half blind.  
"That was something, kid. That was really something." Patty said. So she had found herself able to return. She had struck Copper as the sort to be capable of at least that much.  
"It was a catastrophe." Copper could not even muster the strength to grumble. "But now, it is done."  
"If you say so, it'll be so. I'm not gonna argue with you…uh…what's your name?"  
"Copper Cutter's fine, to you"  
"Well then, Copper Cutter, I don't suppose you could be a real doll and give me one more bit of help? Now we're at the falls and all, I don't suppose you could give me a point in the way of good sir Edwinn?"  
"Erinn?"  
"No…"Memory flashed for Patty at the name. "Ah! But that's his daughter. Real sickly little thing, scared him half to death and halfway across the continent over here. Water's supposed to be special or something, works wonders and all that tripe if you could stomach it."  
"I can take you to Erinn. I am…not from here but you can trust that few know it as well as I."

Patty pulled Copper to his feet and they both slogged their way through the wooden entrance into the village of Angel Falls. Copper, in the depth of his being, pitied Patty and Erinn both the same. The Almighty knew that he was not going to be the one to tell the Stornway visitor that Edwinn was dead.


	2. Chapter 2- The Cold Winds of Stornway

The castle town of Stornway was the heart of the western continent, the centre of the markets and the touching point for travellers from far and wide. Behind the grey stone walls, the metropolis bombarded the eyes instantly with colours and sounds enough to induce temporary blindness and deafness until one finally fell into tune with Stornway itself. Only when the heart of the individual beat alongside the collective heart of the castle town could anybody really say they had lived before they died. It was an orchestra of life conducted by the monarchic hand of King Schott but composed by the town itself in the invisible but ever-present life that was the town's alone.  
But that pulse had ran high and the town's life-blood ran frozen and the air was thick with that same fear and anger, staining the lungs of those that breathed within those walls.

It was late out and Ailsa was beginning to feel the night wind's chill. The single distant street lamp gave but a flickering and minute speck of light in the distance to show her the way home. Not that she needed it; she had made this trip so many times in only a short amount of times. She could not even remember how long she had been coming here. It had been as often as she could for as long as she could. Ever since the Wight Knight…  
While here, she could do little more than think and with a mind such as hers it was a dangerous past time to indulge in for so long. She needed to go back; it was far too late to be standing there in the cold with little more than a set of cotton to cover herself with.  
"See you both tomorrow." She promised and pulled herself away and towards to dim light. A guard had told her earlier that they had finally managed to clear the mountain pass that morning. That was good. It meant that Patty would not be long from her trip to Angel Falls. How long ago had she left? Ailsa did not know. It would do her good to see her at least and even better to meet the legendary Edwinn who had taught Patty everything she knew. For weeks before leaving, he had been all Patty had talked about. All the Quester's Rest knew how wonderful and how god-like Edwinn was, even if they had only worked there a short while as Ailsa had. It would be interesting, if nothing else, to see the man behind the messianic myth.

The Quester's Rest was located just around the corner from the town gates, one of Edwinn's brilliant ideas to capitalise on the 'weary traveller' demographic, was even marked by streams of coloured bunting strung up from the doors to the town gates. It was impossible to miss and therefore a mystery as to why there had been next to no customers for years. How could Ailsa know? She was only a spare set of hands around the inn.  
With a special two handed knock that meant nothing to anybody except her, Ailsa nudged open the door with her toe and instantly felt relief swell up when Patty's was the first voice that she heard.  
"I tell ya, Ginny, this one's just the one we need to pick ourselves up. Mark me. This time next month, no, week, we'll be living it up like back in Edwinn's day."  
Ailsa snuck in through the partially open door and stuck to the wall just beside. The wrath (or even mild disgruntlement) of the banker, Ginny, was a force only measurable in trolls on the danger scale. Not that Ailsa need worry much on this night, Ginny had her palm on her forehead and her voice sounded drained. It was late, perhaps she was just tired.;  
"Really, Pat, you said just about the same thing when you brought me in. 'What the people want is _more_ than an inn' you said. Well, how's that panned out for us? And…" she turned her focus on the young girl keeping herself semi hidden behind Patty and in turn brought Ailsa's attention to her. "…don't take this the wrong way, kid, but somehow I don't think you're the 'guy' Patty was on about."  
Then the girl found her voice but Ailsa was unable to hear her over the door swinging open and clipping her elbow. She snapped her head around and spotted the intruder. _Of all the times for a customer…and of all the customers there were to choose from, we get this badboon.  
_He was dressed interestingly, if nothing else, and the eye he had open was a burning red Ailsa had never thought possible. Other than that, Ailsa thought him an ignorant swine full of himself and distaining of others based on the single fact that they were not him. The lout did not even apologise for clipping her, instead observing the scene before them and taking up the place on the other side of the door.  
Ailsa looked back at the staff, only now they were all on their knees before the girl who brandished a golden trophy above her head.  
_An Inny..?_

After the deification of this bandanna wearing girl Ailsa did not even know the name of, she watched the one-eyed traveller cut across her in a beeline for the girl. Perhaps he was an old friend of hers, although his mannerisms had Ailsa thinking that he was perhaps her loan shark instead. It did not matter. Ailsa made a skipping walk over to Patty who had taken her usual place behind the counter.  
"Hey blue-y!" the innkeeper grinned, pushing her hand through Ailsa's wild, sky-blue hair. Patty had known Ailsa since she was just a toddler and had never quite ridden herself of that idea of her tottering around the inn while her parents were away.  
"Patty!" Ailsa laughed a quick giggle. "How was the trip?"  
Patty grimaced and tossed a look over to the girl in the bandanna and the traveller. It looked like a one-sided conversation at best with the traveller only replying through expression and monosyllabic noises. She caught one shred of the discussion.  
"So did you visit your home country?"  
"No."  
And then Patty spoke. "Edwinn…isn't around anymore. His kid's a dab hand at the trade though, kept the place in Angel Falls afloat all by herself. I tell ya, you could really feel the Edwinn in her. She'll have this place running again, mark me. You mark me good."  
Ailsa had known Patty long enough to know when she was hiding something behind the innkeeper's face but also knew her well enough to know that probing was ill advised. If Patty wanted to say something then she said it and if she did not then no force on the earth would convince her otherwise.  
"Marked. She looks a good sort. Who is she?"  
"Edwinn's daughter, taught her all he knew." Patty was positively beaming.  
"And…_him?" _Ailsa motioned to the traveller and rejoiced to see the mutual loathing grow on Patty's face like a virus.  
"A strong arm she helped once. He's _real _charming, if you get me. Still, they drilled through a mountain rather than face the monster he killed. Not your typical singy-dancy mistral you see. He was supposed to be heading off home when they opened the pass but…actually I was sort of hoping he'd come here."  
"Why?" Ailsa's eyes narrowed.  
"You know why."  
"No, I don't. Because I think you're planning on using him to get rid of the Wight Knight and that can't possibly be right."  
"Ailsa, come on. I thought you would have been jumping at the bit. I know you want to do it, but let's be straight up. You are not a fighter. You're the nicest, sweetest, most precious thing on the continent but you aren't a fighter."  
Ailsa found her fist banging on the counter. She remembered this feeling from the night the Wight Knight had arrived in Stornway. She remembered what it felt like to be angry. Words found themselves on the tip of her tongue but she pulled them back before the anger was replaced with regret. She needed that anger, she had to save it. "Is there anything to be done, Patty, around here?"  
Patty took Ailsa by the hand she had been banging and held it gently. "I'm not about to let you rush off to die. I'm the wrong side of thirty to be burying my friends, y'see? Better we let a professional stick swinger handle it."  
Ailsa had nothing to say aside from "so is there nothing I can be doing?"  
Patty released her hand and whistled over to the bandanna wearing girl. "Erinn! Grab a drink and get ready. We got to have a mad push to get this place all set up and ready for your first day." While Erinn bid a quick farewell to the traveller, making him promise to visit later, Patty called him over. "Say, Copper, you got anything in particular to be doing in this fine city?" She left him just a moment to respond and cut right back in. "'Cause I left this place in need of a decently skill mercenary. King himself wanted something done and, as a general rule, doing favours for the monarchy tends to get you far in life."  
Copper rubbed the space under his wounded eye. "I noticed the sign walking into this place. Truly, you must be a desperate people if you have resorted to random advertisements to wandering sellswords. Does this king of yours not have an army…a competent army?"  
"The army tried." Ailsa growled quietly, avoiding looking at Copper. "They tried the night he came and they tried going after him. It didn't matter, he routed them all."  
"Truly an elite fighting force then." Copper stretched out his arms, the day finally wearing on him. "Very well, I sought employment regardless. I shall seek an audience with this king of yours tomorrow."  
Patty smiled the innkeeper's smile. "Would ya? Well you just more and more of a doll by the day. Not to mention, you kill the knight and word gets out that we were the ones that set you up here, I reckon that'll be just the push this place needs to kick Erinn off nice and good like."  
"If you say so. I do not suppose I might get a room for the night?"  
"Well, we just gotta set up a bit, shouldn't take more than an hour or so. Do you reckon you can make it until then?" Just then, a look flashed across her face that broke the innkeeping mask for a moment and replaced it with a growing intrigue at the personal brilliance. "Actually, why don't you wander for a bit and soak up the town a bit? That ought to kill the time for a while…actually, Ailsa, go with him. Can't be doing with our great and noble hero getting lost on the first night."  
Ailsa's silent protests matched against Patty's equally silent goading and finally the latter won out. With a collective farewell from the inn stirring back from slumber, Copper stepped from the door with Ailsa shuffling after him.

It was colder now that it had been before, the winds through the streets were seeing to that and cutting through Ailsa with flying daggers of ice.  
"Why do you wish to slay the knight this much?" Copper suddenly asked. Ailsa realized that he must had seen her outburst and her face flushed as red as her hair was blue.  
"He attacked my town. He killed people."  
In Copper's single eye, she could see that he did not believe her and it unsettled her enough to fear silences with him. "What happened to your eye?" she asked. A tactless question but it steered them clear of waters she had no wish to tread.  
He turned away and began walking with her taking a second to realize she was supposed to follow.  
"A fight I blundered. The eye remains under the lid but the vision is nothing more than a hazy blur. No healing herbs seemed to do anything."  
"Have you tried a spell?" She reached across for his face before he could reply. "Here."  
He swatted her hand away with a crack of his fingertips and a solid glare.  
"Sorry." She conceded, shrinking back into herself. "Here, I'll show you where the castle is."

It turned out that Stornway was built along a single road stretching round a fountain and to the castle gates with the rest of the town branching off from the centre. Ailsa noticed that Copper seemed to spend a long time looking at the fountain as they passed it. She had never really noticed until then how pretty the water looked in the half moonlight. When they both saw that they had both been captivated by the same thing, they stooped.  
"Castle's there." Ailsa mumbled halfheartedly, flicking her fingers in the general direction.  
"You mean the giant construct resembling in all ways a castle…is the castle? What a weird and wonderful world."  
The quiet reigned for a long time after that with only the wind's soft whistle and the smooth splashing of the fountain to sing that night. The dulled voices of passers-by faded into an inaudible stream of noise as the collective voices of men, women, children and the elderly combined into the night time hush of Stornway. It was a quietened buzz, yet never asleep and never dead.


	3. Chapter 3- No Words

**Chapter 3- No Words**

Dawn broke in a burning splash across the newly born Stornway sky in a symphony of droning bird noise and regular grunts from outside the town walls. It was enough to have Ailsa up before any time she would have considered reasonable on any day but this one. She felt oddly indifferent at the prospect of the day and put it down to early morning fatigue. The new girl was already awake and at the counter, Ailsa did not even think she had moved from that position all night, and smiled and waved over at Ailsa with hollow eyes ravaged dark by tiredness. Returning the greeting, Ailsa set about a quick morning run wiping the tables and sweeping the floors while the inn still remained empty. Satisfied, or perhaps just impatient, she tossed the wet rag and broom to the store room and made for the door. Only when she opened the great wooden thing and the morning chill broke in did she realise that she had yet to get dressed out of her nightwear.

She returned slipping on the last of her two sandals and swung out of the door and then swiftly back in.  
"Is he still asleep?" she asked Erinn, the new innkeeper flinching from how loud her voice was in the quiet. She flustered and distracted herself by organising flagons beneath the counter that did not need organising before she found her voice.  
"Copper left a couple of hours ago. I was only half awake but I saw him leave; he was always an early riser, even back in Angel Falls."  
Panic sprinted through Ailsa for a single terrifying moment as she worried the he had gone to the castle without her. The Almighty knew she was never going to allow him to hunt the Wight Knight without her at his side. "The castle doesn't hold court until midday." She told both Erinn and herself with a sigh. Realising her own exhaustion from her rapid work that morning, she strolled up to the counter and began pouring herself a drink, only to be interrupted by Erinn promising to make them both one.  
"Who even is this mercenary, anyway?" Ailsa asked, tapping her mug on the counter following her second sip. "Aside from a fruity dresser and a grade A git?  
"I wish I could tell you but, truth be told, I don't know much more than anyone else. He fell from the waterfall during the earthquake and I pulled him out. My father always taught me to shelter the needy so…" she trailed off. "He was more than happy to lend a hand where he could to pay me back. Well, I say 'happy', but you know."  
"Shall we say, just in a state just a tad less moody than usual?"  
"You know, he's actually not that bad once you get to know him some."  
"And do _you_ know that calling something 'not that bad' actually tells me that it is 'that bad'."  
Erinn finished her mug with a last swig and was instantly scrubbing it down and placing it clean with the others. Already she looked ten times more alert. "Not many travellers came out all the way to Angel Falls but I've seen, I think, at least one of every type of person while I was running the place. I met jolly types, sneaky types, arrogant types and plain crazy types. He's the first I've met who just seems the hateful type."  
Ailsa slouched and stretched and capped it with a yawn. "Once again, you dub this gentleman as 'not that bad'."  
Erinn smiled a small and awkward smile. "Why does he hate?"

Before Ailsa could answer, the door was booted open and the cold breeze clutched her sides with the icy fingers of an immature prankster. Wheeling on the door, she already knew it was Copper.  
He was positively filthy, his groomed brown locks drenched and stuck down with sweat and his face as flushed red as his eye. His clothes at least looked undamaged.  
"Erinn, have somebody fix me a bath. I doubt even this king of Stornway will permit me audience If I look a beggar."  
Erinn practically flew round the counter with words of confirmation still leaving her lips as she ran out back to get started on the bath. Meanwhile Copper had taken a seat at one of the tables and was furiously scrubbing clean his sword.  
"Drink." He demanded and Ailsa realised he had meant her.  
"Where have you been?" she asked.  
"Is that some unique local Stornish swill? It sounds dreadful. No, a regular mug of something to wake me up will do."  
For a moment, Ailsa did not know if he had been joking or truly was mindlessly foolish enough to actually think it a drink. Then indignation wiped out her curiosity and she instead made a deliberate display of ignorance.  
"Barmaid! I made my request for a drink, are you deaf or merely disobeying me for petty spite?"  
"I'm not the barmaid here, so I don't need to 'serve' you anything." Ailsa re-enacted Patty's tried and tested innkeeping grin as best she could and found it a more monumental task than she ever had thought.  
Copper snorted. "Whatever excuse you give me for your obvious ineptitude, I have no spur to pursue the matter." He dragged himself back to a stand and made a rigid and slow step to the rooms where Erinn had begun on his bath. "In any case, you ought to elevate yourself beyond the vagabondish presentation with which you adorn yourself so."  
"What?"  
He rolled his red eye. "Clean yourself up and be ready when I am; I will not await you. You wanted part in the slaying of this Wight Knight character and I have need of intelligence." He jerked sharply as though he had been rudely interrupted by a peevish voice snapping with an insult in his ear. He made a subtle swat at the space where the phantom noise only he was privy to yet even so Ailsa caught it and found it odd but said nothing. "Just make yourself befit for your king. I shall be glad to have you along…though certainly not for your company, let me be certain. I also know nothing of your combat ability although I should confirm that it bears no relevance as I intend for you to take no part in the duel. Now, if you have any questions…worth an answer I must stress…speak now and quickly before daylight burns me to infuriation."  
Giddiness and fury boiled up together in a sudden swell beginning in her stomach and flooding her head before she could properly process and react to what had just occurred. Vengeance, yet no revenge and an offer of friendship offered as coldly as though it had crawled from beneath the Hermany frost. She had been asked whether she had questions; of course she did! Blazing with rage but placated with joy, she would sooner ask what it was she was supposed to feel. Words jammed, always her weak point, and instead she asked her second most burning curiosity:  
"Why do you speak like such a ponce?"  
Copper glared and stepped into the bright yellow stairs that led upstairs to his bath.

"What's the matter?" Ailsa asked Copper once they were well clear of the gates of Stornway and some distance across the fields surrounding the castle town. The 'audience' with the Schott monarchy, for all its anticipation, had boiled down to little more than the King adding a location to the information already readily available. In honesty, it seemed all rather pointless and she had not even had to chance to admire the castle. Between Copper's swift and impatient march and the steely keep-away faces of the guards that remained following the Wight Knight's attack, all she had caught had been a blur of red on green and grey stone walls racing by.  
The Schott's themselves, whom Ailsa had always pictured as otherworldly beings of regal supremacy and haughty disposition towards the lesser masses, had proved little more than desperation ravaged aristocrats with creases in their fineries. Queen Schott had not stopped weeping which, while heart-breaking at first, quickly wore on Ailsa's nerves as she endlessly wailed about potential threats.  
_It's like she doesn't even realise what has already happened._ Ailsa remembered thinking and then wondering what Copper had thought about the whole affair. He at least seemed pre-occupied in drawing sense from King Schott's rambles on the repulsiveness of the villainous Wight Knight. How horrified was the king that the knight should chance to dare attempt to make away with his daughter.  
_Another one who cares nothing for what is already lost._  
The daughter herself, the Princess Simona, had been by far the least insufferable of the three but even she, in all her angelic sweetness, ground Ailsa's nerves to dust when she insisted on meeting the knight herself and surrendering to his demands.  
If Copper had known about these rulers what Ailsa now knew, then in some small part she forgave the mercenary minstrel's behaviour.  
In answer to her question, Copper pulled a face intended to indicate thought. "I merely wonder about my adversary. He was powerful enough to throw back your entire (admittedly pitiful) city's strength twice yet not powerful enough, it would seem, to finish his task and spirit away the princess. Now, unless she is some hidden fisticuffs master and those dainty knuckles have crushed the jaws of countless assailants, I might suggest she defended herself through alternate means. Perhaps she bribed the fiend with her offer to approach him alone at a later date as she so furiously fought to do so…but no, I see no reason for a creature such as this Wight Knight to agree to such an offer when he has already won."  
"To be honest, I don't much care why he left." Ailsa spat. "And I don't much care to try and put myself in the place of someone I intend to kill."  
Copper barked a sharp laugh, unrestrained and unanticipated, Ailsa had not thought him capable than anything but snorting. It would have been funny if he had not been laughing at her.  
"What?!" she hissed.  
"Firstly," Copper commenced, wiping a watery eye clear. "I severely doubt you have ever killed before, so do not begin to boast now. Secondly, recall I told you explicitly that you would not see combat with this foe. Thirdly…" he paused and gave the leather whip Ailsa had found in a back room of the inn a patronizing flick. "…thirdly I fear he might be struck cold with terror by your fearsome arms and decline to battle at all."  
The snort returned in place of the bark and Ailsa flushed red. It was not her fault she had had neither the time nor the money to afford a better weapon. It was all she had and all she would have felt comfortable with. She had entertained a large knife from the kitchen before deciding against it.  
They continued on across the grasslands in silence, stopping only to vanquish a monster that grew too bold to ignore. Mostly, however, Copper had them finished before Ailsa could even untangle her whip.  
But she was learning. Every foe Copper felled, Ailsa remembered how. She remembered how he had moved and where he had stood. She made a mental note of whom he targeted first and then thought over why. She may have begun as baggage and likely, in Copper's eyes, she would remain as such. However, she adamantly refused to allow anyone but herself the pleasure of ending the Wight Knight.

At some stage, Copper finally got around to asking after the Wight Knight through Ailsa.  
"A lance fighter on horseback…full black plate armour and a lightning based ability…" Copper sampled Ailsa's information on the tip of his tongue and studied a particularly fast moving cloud in the sky above as a focus for his planning. Having finally reached the lake north of the town where the Wight Knight had been camping during his siege of Stornway, Copper took a survey of the vicinity and, finding it suitably tranquil, took a knee and laid his sword across his knee and began an affectionate and dutiful inspection of the blade.  
"He's not here." Ailsa scoured the hills and across the trembling skin of the lake in search of the dark figure of the Wight Knight.  
"Give it time." Copper said, testing the edge of the sword against the glare of the sun. "Between the one man assault on your town of ineptitude and the shadowy demands for the princess of said town all set against the backdrop of a field by a lake, I am safe in assuming this one has a certain flair for the dramatic. I would be so inclined as to wait until at least sundown."  
Ailsa scowled. "I'm sure the day would simply fly by for you, seeing how much time you waste with the stupid voice."  
Copper lay down on the grass with his sword laid comfortably over his front and his eye shut in respite. Ailsa now added indifference to the ever mounding pile of reasons for which she despised Copper. With another furious search for the Wight Knight that continued to earn her unyielding hatred with his continued absence, she growled at Copper.  
"How do we even know he'll be here? Just because he said he would, how can you trust the secondhand word of that monster?!"  
And so, when Copper ignored her once more, Ailsa's fury boiled over and she ran up to Copper and drove her foot for his hip.  
It was only when Ailsa found herself staring the other direction with Copper's hand clasped about her ankle that her rage cleared enough to realise that he had reversed her kick and stood up with her still entirely incapacitated.  
She demanded he release her which he silently refused to do until she had calmed which only fuelled her anger. As a result, they were both locked in the position for some time and only separated when Ailsa's struggles wore down Copper's grip.  
Enraged anew at the tumble, Ailsa shot up and swung for Copper with one balled fist after another and each struck the empty air.  
At the perpetuating failure of her fists, madness forced her hand to her whip and a refusal to compromise sparked a single strike with the leather strip. It was surprise which delayed Copper's defense and the crack below his covered and useless eye that had him crying out at the sting.  
"You petulant, scruffy, naked ape!" he screamed at Ailsa, halting her attack while he pressed fingers to the wound and checked for blood.  
Cutting an instinctive apology short, Ailsa took up the sneer Copper had abandoned for his contorted grit of pain. "Sanctimonious git! What kind of mercenary are you?"  
Seemingly overcoming the pain with only a reddened patch to show for it, Copper scowled at Ailsa and hoisted his sword to point at her. "Try and strike me a second time." He commanded. Ailsa's face dropped before mimicking Copper's expression.  
"Who's petulant now? Some warrior you are, threatening to kill a girl for that! What do you even think you're doing?"  
"Educating you." He growled and prompted again for Ailsa to try and strike him once more.

They sparred like that until late afternoon, when the sun began to retreat into the horizon in the death throes of inferno and the lake exploded thousands of times in both mourning and celebration of the day. By that time, Ailsa was too exhausted and Copper too cautious of the approaching night to continue.  
Fully clothed, Copper strolled into the ice cold of the lake and washed the sweat from his body while ignoring the protestations of Ailsa regarding the use of sodden clothes in a duel.  
"I advise you bathe as well, so much as you can as quickly as you can. Your stench is ghastly and I need no such distractions if your pitiful town is to be spared this Wight Knight's wrath."  
Pulling as mocking a face as she could manage, Ailsa settled for simply dunking her arms into the lake and expecting Copper to kick her in from behind. He did not, however, and she was left to herself.  
"Why do you want to kill the knight?" Copper asked at length.  
"I told you." Ailsa said woodenly, finishing her cleaning prematurely and drying her arms and hands on her shirt. "He killed people in my town. He needs to be stopped. That's all there is to it."  
"Oh?" Copper folded his arms and rested against the steep rise of the nearby hill. "You must forgive me if I doubt it as trivial and honestly ludicrous reason as noble vengeance for the masses for the sake of mere benevolence your cause to take up murder. Ironically to avenge murder…you much feel so right in your actions. But of course you would, inherent hypocrisy is something perfected by your kind, I must say."  
Ailsa denied him the pleasure of looking at her face. When they had fought…or rather while Copper had been teaching her how to fight, she had almost forgotten how much she loathed this wandering minstrel. She was too exhausted to argue, however, and forced him to be content with a deadpan "Is that so?"

They stayed in silence until the beginning of night, when a shy moon slowly began to coax itself out of the silhouette of Stornway in the distance. Stars eventually joined the celestial superpower and night began.  
"Should we stay much longer?" Ailsa asked and received no answer. She was unsurprised at Copper's habitual ignorance but still began to wheel on him in an equally habitual fury.

But seeing the colourfully dressed minstrel seated with his arms around his knees with his remaining eye enthralled by the sky stopped her voice. There was a certain sadness to his visage, a pining and regret behind the eternal scorn or perhaps at the heart of it or even the cap of it. A Stornway wind pushed out from the city and sent a chill through Ailsa that made her think of the fire and buzz at the Quester's Rest that ought to have begun brewing at that time. It was too late to be out and the Wight Knight had refused to show up. She felt as though she ought to be disappointed, yet all she was was taken up with the sight of Copper staring lost at the moon.  
"Who are you, Copper? Is that your real name?" she asked, edging closer.  
He mumbled something inaudible but his head-shake was apparent enough.  
"What is your name then?"  
"Irrelevant."  
"How old are you?"  
"Older than you."  
"Where are you from?"  
"Nowhere you would know."  
"Do you have any family? Any friends where you're from?"  
No answer.  
"What about the ones here? At the Quester's Rest? Patty and Erinn and…y'know. Are they your friends?" she asked, stopping when she realised she was almost directly atop Copper and not once had he looked at her.  
"In a year from this day, I will not be speaking their names, nor them mine."  
Ailsa stepped back and took in the view Copper was indulging in, if only to distract herself from Copper himself.  
"You are a sad and lonely man, I think, aren't you…Copper?"

There was a silent agreement to allow just an hour more before returning and each minute that passed sent the night diving into icy depths of winds regressing from curious to cruel. Clouds moved in, spitefully snatching stars from the view that kept both Ailsa and Copper enduring and obtrusively barging in front of the moon, slicing the sight in two with a uniform black incision.  
Ailsa recognised the night and stood straight to attention, nudging Copper from his daze.  
Hooves.  
The winds shunted once through the grass underfoot and billowed out the loose clothing on Ailsa and rushed her day-sky blue hair forward as her eyes narrowed and venom boiled her blood to acid.  
Her hand was clutching her whip's handle and tearing it out before Copper was even stood up and she was cracking at the chilled air immediately.  
"Where are you?!" She cried out, searing her throat.  
She felt Copper's hand press on her shoulder in an attempt to calm her but she forced him off. Her breaths quickened and the air tasted like ash up her nose and in the back of her throat.

Then she saw him again.

Atop the hill in armour as black as his heart and his nightmare horse and clanking like the shackles of hell with every trot.  
It was all Ailsa could do not to scramble up the hill and claw out his throat where he sat.  
The Wight Knight gazed down at them through the impenetrable darkness of his visor with what Ailsa could only imagine was a sneer to rival Copper's.  
Nobody said a word until the knight leapt down from the hill and began a way towards them, the only noise snapping at the silence being the regular thuds of hooves on the ground.


	4. Chapter 4- The Wight Knight

**Chapter 4- The Wight Knight**

In the failing light with only the spectre of the moon on the skin of the lake for light, the Wight Knight's armour snatched away the light and moved towards them as a mass of flickering darkness. The glowing eyes of his steed carving through the condensation curling from its nostrils struck at Copper and Ailsa like twin wraiths acting as heralds for death himself.  
He was a giant, Copper immediately observed, yet his stance upon his horse which carried itself with a power equal to that of its dread master suggested no impediment to dexterity or speed as a result. His lance, kept gripped in the black gauntlet of his left hand, was almost as tall as the wielder and snarled with the crackling energy the storm that was his presence demanded.  
"You are not the princess." He said in a voice that he did not so much speak so much as emit and thunder. Copper felt the heart in his chest race and he commanded it quiet. The air tasted thick and beside him, he felt acid from Ailsa and could hear her nails scratching the handle of her whip. He took a moment, and no more than that, to pray that she did not do something idiotic.  
"What is your obsession with her?" Copper asked slowly, scraping and stealing each second he could before he was forced to combat.  
The Knight was unreadable behind the helm and his single stamp forward in response rattled Copper's very bones and send ripples fleeing across the skin of the lake. He slowly reached for the handle of his sword; slowly as to not provoke battle before its time. Against the cold of his palm, the handle burned with anticipation. That was odd. He had never known himself the chill before a fight and the night itself was not a cold one. Each breath he took was drenched in the icy essence of the air and every breath had the Knight's horse take another step closer.  
"Why not seize the princess in your initial assault? Why prolong the matter? Why ever begin it?" Copper heard his voice grow louder with each unanswered question.  
Then the frost that had been teasing his cheek bit him with venomous spite. He dare not move his stare from the Knight but Ailsa's voice was clear enough.  
"Why was she worth attacking the town in the first place?" She was snarling; each word close to shattering under the rage they held. "Why was she worth murdering people I care about_?_"  
Again denying anyone an answer, the Knight held his lance aloft and pierced the clear night sky, appearing to Copper to balance the moon on the point of his weapon. Copper could not abide that arrogance.  
"Where is she?" The Knight demanded, catching Copper off guard with the thud of his horse's hoof on the ground. "Where are you keeping my beloved Mona?!"

The Knight was charging before Copper could even process his question and could only manage a stupefied "What?" before he felt the lance's grim tip run a thin red line across his shoulder. He hit the ground, rolling over the grass once and then twice before instinct finally returned to him and he was back on his feet. He checked his arm; definitely bleeding yet his clothes remained untorn.  
He snapped his head back up. The Knight was rearing back on his horse which shrieked like a wraith against the trembling water behind it, making ready for its second pass.  
"And we were sharing such frightfully invigorating conversation!" Copper tore round the sword and held it in stance; just as his Master had taught him when dealing with mounted opponents. Admittedly, the style was supposed to be used in closed quarters, yet it ought to work all the same.  
But of course, that had to be just the moment when the unseen tapestry of fate revealed Copper's handicap.  
Ailsa tore out in front of Copper, her yells of hate drowning out the Knight's dread mare, and her whip a swirling tongue of hell itself.  
If she had even once struck out at the horse's legs, then perhaps she could have forced the beast to toss its master or even hampered its charge. But each crack of the leather whip came accompanied by the hollow ring of the weapon bouncing off of the armour and another frustrated curse from Ailsa.  
Copper found his legs and sprinted forward, just as the Knight was hoisting his lance. Slowly, too slowly, as though he was hesitating. It wasn't until Copper had barged in front of Ailsa and parried the lance that the Knight sped up his movements.  
"Out of the way!" Ailsa shunted Copper two steps to the side and ducked under a sweep from the lance. Shooting up and jumping, she snapped out the whip again and the Knight's helm screamed in indignation while the giant himself stayed silent.  
"Imbecilic barmaid!" Copper snatched her before her feet found the ground and hauled her away from the Wight Knight who wheeled around and began bracing for another charge. She bashed at his forehead with her fists and kicked at his legs until he was forced to drop her.  
"What are you doing?! I had him!" Ailsa roared at Copper, face red and eyes icy and betraying traces of tears.  
"No! Simpleton! You did _not_, as you say, 'have him'. Surely the repeated pings of your own incompetence ought to have clued even you in through your delusion!"  
The rolling avalanche of hooves cut the chastisement short and the two dived from the Knight's charge path. Ailsa to the left and Copper to the right. Recovering in a roll, he leapt forward at the Knight, hoping to catch him somewhat unawares in the conclusion of his rush.  
Copper's sword rang out against the Knight's lance and the weapons wailed in a blistering fury that may have been heard to some as a song.  
Copper jumped up and over the Knight, lashing down his blade and aiming at the horse's neck. He tore round his foot for insurance; if the maser defended the beast then he fell from it all the same.  
The sword clanged and scraped against the lance that flew in over the animal like a mother eagle over its young and Copper found a single moment to note the Knight's benevolence to the creature and add it to the compounding enigma that his opponent was. He had to wonder if he himself was so prevalent a topic in the Knight's mind.  
Just then. He felt cold metal grip his ankle and clutch tight, squeezing his leg until he winced and launching him round and through the air. His face met the ground; filth encrusting the blinded half of his face and one spiteful stone gashing his cheek.  
He stood, dazed. His hand felt as hollow as his head which had taken up a mocking and endless ringing that had replaced the grunts and chimes of battle that he had grown used to. His sword was gone and immediately he swung round his head to search for it. He could find nothing in the dark smudge that the world had become and could only feel the chill of the night carving him to his core.  
His Master, once again, would have been disgusted at his display. Even at his worst, he had once been better than that. He had done everything right, down to the kick which he had always managed to forget in practice. He had felt off, however, while airborne. Unbalanced and nauseous and all too aware of the clutching grasp of gravity to focus, he had met failure and now stared death in its black and armoured majesty.

It had been easier with wings.

He resolved, until the final moment, to fight. Neither the pestering voice in his ear nor his own pride would allow anything else and he at last found balance in his stand. He still lacked a sword and his hand felt the cold all too well without it. He would have to do.  
The Wight Knight hoisted his lance aloft and flooded it with a crackle and power that turned the dark night to day and blinded Copper's remaining eye. The lightning attack, no doubt. He doubted he could have dodged it, even if her here not still reeling from the blow to the head. If he had his blade, he might have caught and channelled the lightning through the divine metal…  
How hard _had_ he struck his head?  
He tried to drag his leaden legs to movement and found them cowardly and waiting for a death he had not subscribed to. He cursed them. They felt frozen to the spot, unwilling to brave the frigid night to secure Copper's life. And that would seem to be the cause of Copper's death if word ever reached his home; he could not stand the cold.  
What he might have done to have at least returned home once before death found him. Yet he had collapsed at the first hurdle.  
Pathetic.

Between Ailsa's shriek cursing either the Knight or Copper or both of them at once and the cold exploding into a blizzard of the instant in a flash of snowy blue, Copper's head was sent into a spin and he never quite figured out whether he or the Knight struck the ground first.

At least with the cold finally dispelled, he was able to coax his body to life and find his sword where it lay some feet from where he had fallen. He wasted no time in rushing over to where the Knight was struggling to his feet and made ready to salvage even a scrap of honour from the fight.  
Ailsa blocked his path with her palm still glowing from the crack spell. "I have him."  
Copper felt it wiser to concede than to fight and lose _two _battles in a single night. Even then, however, he insisted he joined Ailsa as backup. A hard won victory in itself.  
"How did you even kill that monster Patty was talking about? What kind of mercenary are you?" Ailsa said without taking her eyes off of the seemingly unconscious Knight.  
Copper spat scornfully. "I had two eyes and depth perception in addition when I fought the Hexagoon." He slipped into a quick pout. "And I hate fighting cavalry."  
"Excuses excuses. Now shut up. The moment this thing shows it's alive, I end it. I want it to look me in the eye when I do it."  
"Quite the budding sociopath, are we not, barmaid? However, I must demand you abstain from murder at least-"  
"Again with the stupid voice! Just shut up! Why are you even here? You've been completely useless for everything since you arrived. I even had to shove you at the beginning to stop you getting skewered. Standing around like an idiot!"  
"And suppose I entirely forget your _crippling_ whip assault that amounted to little more than- "  
"Argh!" Ailsa wheeled on Copper and thudded his chest with a balled fist. "Stop with the voice! Just stop it!"  
Copper's reply was hacked short by the clatter of armour and an otherworldly grunt from the space just in front of them. Ailsa cursed and tried to fling out the crack spell she had been holding only for the severely diminished shape of the Knight to spin around the rushed attack and swallow up her hands in his own. She kicked out at his shins and, again, all her efforts earned were the infuriating cawing of ringing metal.  
Copper dashed in and made a deliberate feint with his sword, only so much as to force the Knight to release Ailsa and step back and followed it with a second to secure the distance before settling himself facing the Knight.  
"Get out of my way!" Ailsa demanded, trying to force her way past Copper. The mercenary took a chance on a thought and turned his back to the Wight Knight to take Ailsa by the shoulders and hold her in place.  
"First, find and subdue if necessary his steed. I cannot fight him, by my own admission, while he is on horseback yet you would be at a clear disadvantage fighting him on foot. You are unlikely to enjoy such luck twice and catch him off-guard again."  
"Don't think I'm letting you be the one to kill him." Ailsa's eyes narrowed. Her anger, Copper could feel now rather than see.  
"Barmaid, I am far too curious and so drowning in questions at present that I could not possibly bring myself to end him until–"  
"I get it." Ailsa shook herself free of Copper's hands and threw a look over at the Wight Knight with intensity enough to char mountains black. "I'll be back for it."  
Ailsa turned her back on the two just in time to hear Copper compliment the Knight on his chivalry in his ever so smug and infuriating tones. Whether he was being serious or sarcastic was unknowable and that was perhaps what bothered Ailsa most about it.  
Then the sword and the lance to scream in passionate fury behind her and she forced herself to run that she would not turn back.

She found the horse not far from where the Knight had fallen, soaking a leg in the cooling water and whinnying softly. It almost choked Ailsa to think of the storming image of oncoming death that the creature had been when the Knight rode it so furiously. It appeared injured but seemingly desperate to keep watch on its master. If said master had been anyone else, Ailsa might have pitied it.  
She raised her hand and brought ice to her palm again, mentally steeling herself in case the beast turned hostile. Clouds above moved in front of the moon and the dark night was plunged into a void of blindness with only the red of the horse's eyes and the sound of a world of steel to recognise it by.  
The horse noticed Ailsa and turned on her as sharply as its injured leg allowed it to. It winced all the same.  
"Was that me?" Ailsa asked it, the softness of her voice shocking her in how alien it had come to sound. "When I knocked it off?"  
Taking the horse's aggressive snorts and quick thrash in the lake as confirmation, Ailsa apologised as best she could to an animal. What had she been sent to do again? 'Subdue, if necessary, his steed.' Had been Copper's precise words and, by Ailsa's eyes, the steed was therefore both found and subdued.

So she turned back around feeling the cold or the first time that night and crushing out the crack in her hand. The clash of metal had finally halted and, when the connotations of such an event finally registered, Ailsa was sprinting again. She stopped after a few steps, her chest burning and her throat on fire. How had she not noticed before how exhausted she was? The sweat on her face now froze her and the wind picked up for spite and dove in around her ribs. She forced herself to keep moving, scanning the darkness for Copper and the Knight.  
The cloud finally cleared and the moon's light splashed into the lake and flooded over onto the grass and soaked Copper and the Knight. The Knight had been forced to a slouch; almost a kneel. Copper, too, was slouching, but he was so tense within that slouch, he could better be compared to a predator set to pounce on the kicked dog refusing to heel that was the Knight.  
"I imagine that this one is about done. Now will you simply answer my questions so that I need not make the barmaid wait?" he winced away suddenly from something about his ear that the dim light refused to allow Ailsa to see, swatting away casually with his free hand. "But I must agree with my rather noisy companion here, I can ill afford to waste time sating my own personal curiosity. My return home depends upon your defeat."  
"Y-you…what manner of skill was that? That was nothing like when you first attacked." The Knight huffed.  
Copper shrugged. "As I explained to the barmaid, I find difficulty against foes on horseback, especially in this feeble state you find me in. Now for my questions. Why do you so desire the princess…beyond the usual reasoning for tall, dark and malevolent knights to capture fair maidens?"  
"You…speak as though…she belongs to your employer. She is mine!"  
"Petulance ill fits one so imposing as you, my friend."  
The Knight coughed once. "Were your skills not proven, I would name you arrogant."  
"Oh, I _am _arrogant, disgustingly and utterly irredeemably so. Furthermore, were my skills not proven, I doubt we would be having this discussion. Now do go on, I fear the barmaid's approach is nigh and I would much rather not waste time in placating her."  
"Only…answer me this first."  
Copper provided his assent with a slow nod and the Knight made a clear effort to rise to stability before collapsing back into the slump. He never kneeled, however, that he refused to do.  
"Did she…princess Mona…did you meet with her? Did she…speak of me? When last I saw her, she appeared not to know me and so I bid her remember and meet me here whence she recalled. How long it must have been and yet she is as beautiful as ever. Time itself knows that to mar her would be a crime more abhorrent than–"  
"Than murder?" Ailsa cut in, unable to stomach any more. She felt her hands flush with the frost and flexed her fingers to accustom herself to the chill. "Oh, but of course we wouldn't want your girlfriend's pretty little face spoiled, would we?"  
With a slow grind of his neck to face her and a sigh that drained the air from his lungs, the Wight Knight finally addressed Ailsa. "I know you…I recall you from that night when first I made for my beloved."  
"You ought to. I don't think I've changed much since then. At least on the outside."  
"Such hatred in one so young…I cannot fathom what I have done to have earned such wrath?"  
Ailsa's eyes shot open and the fire found her throat again. "How could you not remember!? How could you forget it so easily?! What have you done? I'll tell you what you've done! You murdered them! You cut them apart and left me to find them, you animal!"  
"Who…?"  
"My parents! Don't you dare say you don't remember them. My parents! You killed them! You killed them! You killed them!"  
The silence made a slow and hesitant return to the lake with only an obnoxious insect buzz rattling in the ears along with the reverberation of Ailsa's hatred. Copper stared hard at Ailsa with a mouth flickering between open and closed but all the same silent and the Knight followed suit. When he did speak, after some time, it was a solemn and sad voice. It was the soft rain after the thunder.  
"Child…there is nothing I can say, for words are in no means my field of preferred mastery. All I can tell you is the truth of the matter. You hold me responsible for the destruction of your parents, I tell you now I did no such thing. Yet…I do now recall them."  
It was only Copper rushing across that stopped Ailsa from ending the Knight on the spot. He continued while she was restrained.  
"In the utter anarchy my presence caused, your town's prison's found themselves, no doubt, with a noticeable lack of guards. Such a situation is only too ripe for exploitation for the oft forgotten dregs of a society. One such dreg, under the cover of chaos, chanced his escape and set himself upon a couple running rampant in search of their daughter. He demanded their coin to fund his flight and, in the confusion, he stole their lives instead. Terror took him and he fled." The Knight knelt down his head and Copper was able to release Ailsa at last. "I was obligated by duty and personal disgust to dispense summary justice for the killings. I smote the coward where he stood and set to continue on my path. It was then that you chanced to discover me. Fate, in all its cruel machinations, could only have chosen to dispense such an outcome as that."  
"L-lies." Ailsa choked and then found her snarl again. "Shut up the lies!"  
At last, the Knight had worked his way into a balanced stand and set his sights on the moon. Copper tensed and readied the sword, not truly thinking he would need to use it again that night.  
"Whether you believe me or not…I shall accept justice at _your_ hand if you feel it correct, as I felt it correct. Yet only permit me meet with my beloved Mona again. T'is all I ask. It was after the earthquake. I awoke remembering nothing, only that I was to return to Mona that we might be wed."  
The Knight and Copper both looked to face an empty space beside Copper. While it was not for long, whatever they saw there stunned the Knight and almost had him falling once again.  
"Si-Si-Simona?" he stammered. "She is…Princess…_Si_mona? Then I have been a fool mocked and scorned anew. Unforgivable in my wrath and misguided…I must…I must…resume…the search."  
The hooves approached once more, softer than before, and the horse stood beside the Knight and bent down its head for its master's comforting hands and words of apology. Clearly strained, the Knight hoisted himself up atop the black steed once more and regained the noble position befitting a true knight. "I must agree…it would be most unwise for me to deliver my apology. So…loath as I am to pass on a duty I must ask you to convey my opinion. All the same, this town shall see no more of me."  
"Where do you think you're going!?" Ailsa tried to shout but she found her voice gone. She needed to rest and she needed a drink. She knew what she needed yet what she wanted was another matter entirely.  
"I must believe my beloved remains out there somewhere; I cannot exist if she is not and so I must believe. I shall search. Continent by continent, I will scour the heaven and hell itself if I must. But I shall not rest until she is found. I refuse to die." He nudged his horse into life. "And then, poor child, when Mona and I and together once more, if revenge still remains your heart's desire I shall return to this place and accept your judgement."

As the Wight Knight trotted off into the night, Copper finally felt it time to put his sword in its hilt. As he did so, a voice growing all too familiar all too quickly literally exploded in his ear.  
"Well that just flapping happened…I swear, the things you don't expect to see waking up in the mornings. So far, the list stands at; mystical beams of doom, wingless celestrians and giant black knights with issues in their love lives and a speech almost as flapping annoying as yours."  
Copper gave an almost inaudible grunt in response, as was his norm. Often, he would flick around his ear until she quietened but he found he simply lacked the strength to do so.  
Stella flitted out from her usual place, shrunk down on Copper's shoulder, and took form in front of him. The faerie pulled a loose blond hair back in line behind the gaudy pink flower she wore and fixed Copper with hazel eyes that shone even in the night with their otherworldly origin. Her glittering pink wings fluttered at a near incomprehensible speed, though Copper did not think she needed them to fly. Since the Hexagoon's defeat, Stella had fixed herself to Copper and, as of yet, refused to let her be. Not like Copper had much choice in the matter; Stella was his only available route home as it stood.  
The faerie took a quick glimpse of her surroundings. "You know…super-perbulous as this spot is, you know what it really doesn't beat? Clue, it rhymes with…" she stopped to think and then gave up and clipped Copper about the ear. "It's the Starflight Express, clever copper cutter! Remember? Magical looking train of the heavens? Gold and shimmery? Currently in a wreck on account of unknown doom beams and in need of some major Almighty TLC? Only way for you and I to get on home? Remember it?"  
"Yes, infernal mosquito, I recall it well. Would I even be here were it not for my awareness of the machine?"  
Stella pouted and poked out her tongue. "Keep the sass in check, I saw you scraping the floor not long ago. You celestrians are truly a majestic people." Then Copper did swat at her and Stella, with a quick titter ducked under the half-hearted swat and returned to Copper's shoulder. "Oh, and the…what's her name? Barmaid? Yeah…barmaid who isn't a barmaid. What's the battle plan with her?"  
Copper grimaced and looked over at Ailsa, still staring out where the Wight Knight had rode off. Her fists were clenched and he feared rousing her might provoke another outburst like before. It was none of his concern, but he needed the gratitude of the town. He could only imagine how significantly less grateful they would be if she froze to death out there.  
"I get her back to the inn, and never see her again." Copper decided.  
"Cold." Stella noted. "And considering her dab had in the matter of cold, I almost figured you two'd make a shiny stellar dynamic duo. Buuut…that's none of my business and it's far too late for a beauty like me to be talking to the likes of you. Speak tomorrow. And always remember, your shoulder isn't just yours anymore. I've grown pretty fond of this spot right here so, if you could, next fight just…not make it the only place you choose to get hit? It stinks of blood around here now."  
The faerie was quiet thereafter and at last, Copper had silence. He marched up and past Ailsa, casually calling her over his shoulder when she did not follow immediately.  
"He's lying." She adamantly declared. "I _know_ he's lying."  
"So why let him go?"  
No answer.  
"Regardless, I feel a bathe, a meal and a bed in order. Knowing Erinn, her nerves will be shot about now. She was like that in Angel Falls too. When I spent the evenings I was not running errands for her honing my skills back after my fall, she would be by the town gate without fail waiting for my return."  
"You must…mean a lot to her."  
"I do not think so, at least no more than anyone else." Copper continued to walk on, stopping when Ailsa did not follow again. "Do you hate him?"  
The question snapped her from her daze and had her blink rapidly. Copper repeated it, slower.  
"I don't know." She realised. "But I'll be waiting for him to come back. Like he promised he would."

Copper stole another look at the moon and drank in the night. A quick gust upset the lake and the gentle lapping of the water against the bank sent Copper back to a place he knew yet could not recall the name of. His Master had been there though. His Master, Aquila, who had been the one person in existence whom he respected without question. Copper blinked and promised the moon his return home to Aquila.  
Then he took steps back to Ailsa and gave her back a quick push forward. She started moving at last and, in silence, the two made their way back to Stornway under the observation of the night sky.


End file.
